Happy Birthday, Dad…and Thanks!
Today would have been my father’s 90th birthday. He died in October, 1991 of a smoking related cancer. With Father’s Day just two days ago, he has been in my thoughts a lot.
My father did not have an easy childhood. He spent his early years in the coal region of Shenandoah, PA. His younger sister drowned when he was nine. At age ten, his parents separated and he was sent to live with his Uncle in Philadelphia. By the end of the summer of 1929, he had learned how to navigate the trolley system to get to Shibe Park to watch the Philadelphia Athletics. (Some argue that the ˜29 Athletics were the best professional baseball team ever-and my dad saw them play.) I don’t know this for a fact, but I would guess my father made two promises that summer. The first was that if he ever had children they would learn how to swim. And he would take his kids to their first professional baseball game so that they would not have to go alone. He kept both promises.
To be honest, there were many times when my father and I did not see eye to eye. However, I am grateful for the lessons he taught me and I want to share them here because each one contributed to the work I do today in helping people work and play well with others.
1. A deal’s a deal. I’ve written about this lesson before.(See On Commitment.) My father maintained that one of the best things someone could say about you was that you were dependable and that you would do what you said you were going to do. He lived his life by that rule and I’ve tried to do the same.
2. Baseball. My father marched me out into the backyard as soon as I could walk and taught me how to throw and catch and how to hit a baseball. On a warm July evening when I was six, he took me to see my first big league game – the Philadelphia Phillies and the BROOKLYN Dodgers. The players were larger than life and the grass was the greenest I have ever seen. And this was the season after the Dodgers had finally beaten the Yankees in the World Series. I was hooked. Baseball is a team game. A collection of super-star players does not automatically guarantee a great team. Building a great team is hard work and I have never forgotten that lesson.
3. Don’t give up. Both of my parents were of Polish ancestry. There is an expression in Polish that translates literally to “don’t give up. Whether it when I was trying to complete an impossible school assignment or fight my way out of a batting slump, my father would use that expression. To this day when I am feeling overwhelmed, I hang in there because I can still his voice. Years later when I visited Acoma Pueblo west of Albuquerque, NM I learned that there are words in their native language that are almost exactly the same that every child learns – “never quit.
4. Sense of humor. My father had a wicked sense of humor and he also loved to laugh. I have very fond memories of Saturday evenings spent in hysterical laughter. What is significant is that I remember the laughter and not necessarily why we were laughing.
5. Interdependence. My father was self-employed. He had his own shipping room supply business and his office was in our basement. In fact, it wasn’t until I got to High School that I discovered that most of the other parents actually left the house in the morning to go to work. So I guess the fact that I have been an independent consultant since 1991 is genetic. What my father was very clear about, though, is this: We all need to find out what our gift is – what we can do really well. And we need to appreciate what everyone else’s gift is as well because we need each other to create a better world.
When my father was born nine decades ago, the United States was less than a year from being out of World War I, the Great Depression would start ten years later, and World War II was twenty-two years away. When he died, my aunt told me “John, your father was a good man; you could always count on him. Thanks, Dad.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:35 am
[...] I’ve blogged in the past about what I’ve learned from my father about working and playing well w… I just wanted to share a key lesson from my mother that contributed greatly to my almost twenty year run as a freelance consultant/writer. I was probably about eight years old. It was summertime and I was playing Little league baseball. I guess I inherited my mother’s prowess with a bat because I was a pretty comfortable as a hitter right from the start. And this particular evening I had four base hits and was touting my exploits to the neighbors. My mother overheard my bragging, dragged me into the house, and firmly explained that “tooting your own horn was not only inappropriate, it could come back to embarrass you. Her belief was that it is much better to let others talk about your accomplishments rather than doing it yourself. [...]
February 7th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
[...] I’ve blogged in the past about what I’ve learned from my father about working and playing well w… I just wanted to share a key lesson from my mother that contributed greatly to my almost twenty year run as a freelance consultant/writer. I was probably about eight years old. It was summertime and I was playing Little league baseball. I guess I inherited my mother’s prowess with a bat because I was a pretty comfortable as a hitter right from the start. And this particular evening I had four base hits and was touting my exploits to the neighbors. My mother overheard my bragging, dragged me into the house, and firmly explained that “tooting your own horn” was not only inappropriate, it could come back to embarrass you. Her belief was that it is much better to let others talk about your accomplishments rather than doing it yourself. [...]